Give the Grocer A Wink! (and see what you get)

On July 4th, 1907 Willie Keith stood helplessly in Battle Creek, Michigan watching a fire consume his precious factory.*

Willie was 46, yet he had launched his company barely a year before. He’d already worked for 25 years as the unofficial business manager for a famous Seventh-day Adventist Sanitarium (re-invented from the word ‘sanatorium’) under the shadow of his gregarious and extroverted brother Dr John Henry.

You’d be forgiven for thinking the Sanitarium was a modern facility – menus showed the calories of all food served. On it you would only find fresh, natural foods and – most surprising of all – a totally vegetarian diet. Smoking and drinking alcohol were not permitted, and only tea and coffee substitutes were served. They also discouraged the use of pharmaceutical drugs whenever possible.

But this was not 2016, this was 1879!

It was the start of Mark Twain’s Gilded Age; the nascent beginnings of an American health movement that continues to gather strength internationally even today. These two brothers invented the first tea and coffee substitutes, and introduced America to the startling concept of a cold breakfast.

Heard of granola? It was invented and named at this facility.

In fact, you have heard of Willie Keith, because when he finally broke free of his domineering brother, he went on to build an extraordinary company that gave the world Kellogg’s Toasted Corn Flakes. And all-bran, Rice Krispies, Special K – in sum, the entire concept of a convenient and tasty breakfast cereal.

W. K. Kellogg’s story confirms many of ATSuccess 12 steps, here’s some ways that works for the first 6…

Step 1 – Passion

It wasn’t a sure thing, not at all. By 1912 the market had seen 107 different brands of corn flakes. So how did Willie Keith (he later changed his name to Will Keith) survive?

He had a vision, and extraordinary energy to implement that vision.

And he applied biz principles which – back then – didn’t even have a name. You could say – he helped to invent modern advertising concepts at a time when most people had no phone, and electricity was still a novelty!

Here’s how…

Step 2 – Niche

After 25 years working in a health facility, with a strong emphasis on wholesome foods, the obvious niche would have been towards “a health food”. However, Willie Keith had a hunch that healthy people would not be moved by that.

One of his many fights with his medical brother was over this issue.

Dr John Harvey Kellogg was the public face of the Seventh-day Adventist Battle Creek Sanitarian. However, when his brother struck out on his own, the doctor insisted that no sugar be added to the corn flakes he had invented for his patients.

In a decision of historic proportions, Willie went with adding sugar (and malt and salt) to produce a food that consumers would be willing to make a replacement plan for breakfast. He did this with slogans like:

“Wins its favor through its flavor.”

He created a “delicious” breakfast cereal niche; a faster breakfast that people wanted to eat.

His Gilded Age food revolution is arguably a significant cause that seeded the diabetic and obesity crisis of modern times – an ironic turn of events given its origins with Ellen G. White’s visions from God on how to restore your heath!

Step 3 - Your Service

Willie wrestled with a basic question: how could he stand out with so many competitors selling exactly the same product?

Well, I am sure you can remember “Kellogg’s” right? Today it's synonymous with corn flakes. All his products and advertisements featured “The Original has this signature: W. K. Kellogg.”

He created his own signature system – quite literally – as his actual signature appeared on every packet!

He followed that up with the world’s largest sign ever, dominating Times Square in New York. This was supported by the ubiquitous slogan, printed in the media of the day:

“Excuse me – I know what I want, and I want what I asked for – TOASTED CORN FLAKES – Gooday.”

Maybe you wondered why? Now you know. He needed to be unique.

Advertising the “Alexander Technique” is like trying to advertise “corn flakes” (along with the other 107 companies or, in our case, hundreds of other teachers). How can you stand out?

By building your own unique signature system: finding out how you can stand out.

You will still be corn flakes, but figure out first what you unique?

In testimony to Willie’s strategy: all of the competitors from those times are gone, while Kellogg’s continues on. Willie Smith died in 1951 – yet what he built is surviving to this very day. That’s why in ATSuccess 60Day course, you first need to figure out what will be unique about your service.

Step 4 - Mentors

Were the 25 years that Willie Keith worked as a salaried slave for his glamorous, globe-trotting brother simply wasted years? Are your previous years also wasted?

Of course not.

Willie at different times of the day would become the self-styled bookkeeper, cashier, packing and shipping clerk, errand boy and general utility guy. He arranged funerals, went out in the middle of the night to find mentally challenged patients who had disappeared, and even managed the personal affairs of his brother.

He got the nickname “Mr Fix-It” as he was always willing to learn new things.

In the same way, teachers of Alexander's discovery who feel despair at still struggling to survive can take comfort from this. Like Willie, anyone involved in managing an individual practise has also danced through a multitude of roles.

I was 50 when BodyChance incorporated – it is never too late.

However, your multiple skill sets need context and focus. When I had a family to care for, I found the energy I needed to focus my latent skills in a new direction.

ATSuccess aims to channel skills sets you already possess into a conscious, constructive 12 step process – a process that harnesses universally recognised principles of business to ensure a measure of greater success.

Step 5 - Lists

Another fascinating example of Willie Keith’s vision goes to the question of building lists. How do you build lists to sell cornflakes for heaven’s sake?

This is where his true genius began to shine.

Remember the factory that burnt down? This was within the first year of his incorporation, with the 107 vultures threatening his livelihood. Willie had started out with a working capital of $30,000, yet within a year – leveraging his sales - he spent $90,000 on advertising! It was unheard of at the time – incomprehensible to other businesses.

All this while still trying to burrow from the banks to rebuild his factory.

Willie understood something most Alexander teachers fail to grasp: the asset of your business is not your building, how much money you have or any of your material possessions. As a friend of Willie’s summarised it later:

“The fire is of no consequence. You can’t burn down what we have registered in the minds of the American woman.”

Willie engaged his audience in the only way that was possible in those days – consumer advertising. But what he registered is also critical: his signature system: K.T.C.S. (Kellogg’s Toasted Corn Flakes).

Back in the day before the internet existed, consumer advertising worked for AT. I built a thriving Alexander business in Sydney based on placing a $275 featured advertisement (in those days – a lesson was between $20~$30) in a high brow weekly newspaper, and another weekly ad in the Classified section of the Saturday edition of the Sydney Morning Herald.

Today you need different strategies – which we explore in our implementation focused ATSuccess Pro program – yet the principle remains the same. Build your list by registering your signature system into the minds of those you have defined as your niche.

Step 6 – Marketing

Willie had a huge challenge, not dissimilar to our own today. How many people want Alexander's discovery? None. How many are even interested? None. For Willie it was the same – how many people wanted to eat corn flakes for breakfast? None.

How do you convince someone to desire something they don’t even know about?

Today we use the free intro i.e. “Give them a sample” This was Willie’s innovation.

He sent his sales people out knocking on the doors of millions of American homes, offering housewives samples of his toasted corn flakes.

Why? To get them to know it, like it and want it.

Today the “free sample” has morphed online into what launch whiz kid Jeff Walker calls the “ethical bribe” – offering people a “free sample” in the form of a download, email seminar or white paper.

Instead of getting them to know cornflakes, you are getting them to know you. Instead of getting them to like the concept of a cereal breakfast, you are getting them to like your unique signature system, based on Alexander's discovery. This was so obvious and important to Willie Keith, that when they were designing the crates to freight his corn flacks, he insisted they design them large enough to include free samples.

Finally, perhaps you’re wondering what the title of the blog is all about?

It was another marketing innovation: a city wide mystery campaign, a "secrecy" marketing methodology carried on effectively by Apple today. Housewives were encouraged wink at their grocer, or ask what the wink was about – to be handed a sample packet of Kellogg’s Toasted Corn Flakes.

It’s never too late to begin to build your practise – whether you are just starting out, or you have been teaching for a decade or more. Willie Keith didn’t start Kellogg’s until his 46th year! It’s never too late.

The explanation of the final six steps of ATSuccess are available as part of my own “free sample” which you can sign up for below!

*I am indebted to Horace B. Powell for much of this information. During my recent Portland retreat, I occasioned to visit Powell’s: “The World’s Largest Independent Bookstore.“ It is full of lost treasures in every category you can imagine. My book on W. K. Kellogg still contained the original purchase slip dated March 5th, 1956!